Budget of the NSA: $10 Billion (http://money.cnn.com/2013/06/07/news/economy/nsa-surveillanc...)
Hopes and dreams of 1960s youth looking at Apollo and entering STEM fields: priceless
There are some things money still buys. For everything else there's PayPal??
But well, is there a pretty easily understood, common sense way to compare an yearly budget of $10B with a total cost of $6B, especially in terms of a trade off?
Especially when faced with certain tradeoffs, like comparing a $6B hyperloop with an agency with an annual budget of $10B?
Explaining it the other way around, if you had $270 billion now, you could fund the NSA by $10 billion per year in perpetuity based on the interest. That's a simple calculation of $270B x 3.71%.
I'll trade 7 1/2 months of the NSA annual budget for one hyperloop.